The Presence (15 page)

But he'd saved Lydia, his precious Lydia. She'd forgive him now. Would god?

Pain seared through him. Agony. He hadn't felt pain in more than a hundred years. Did this mean...?

Through the torment, he had a moment of realization. He was human again. And he was dying.

Then there were no more thoughts, no more pain, just a wiping out of everything.

I was told that I crawled up those stairs and that the firefighters found me unconscious in the sanctuary. The fire, they said, had been confined to the basement. The Christmas Eve service had been canceled. The one on Christmas Day, too. I was taken to Huntington Hospital. I had second-degree burns, the skin on my arm and leg peeling and blistered. My throat and lungs were scorched.

It was a while before I was well enough to be questioned, my mom and dad and Grandma by my side as I told my story.

I can't honestly blame them, or the police, for not believing me. Who in their right mind would listen to such craziness?

It just happened to be true.

A body, charred beyond any hope of identification, had been found in the basement. "It's Noah," I whispered. "The ghost. He was visible, in human form, when he saved me. I've thought about it a lot, and I realize that it was because he'd become human again that he was able to die."

The police stared at me in disbelief.

I knew they suspected that I'd gone to the church to meet someone and that the meeting had gotten out of hand. Clearly, I was too ashamed to admit it.

Or perhaps someone had forced me into that basement and only the fire had saved me from rape, or worse. Why didn't I just tell? Well, they said, some young women didn't want to admit to rape, unfortunately.

"Weren't you supposed to be going on a picnic with the Miller boy?" they asked, probing me with their hard eyes and voices.

"I went to the church instead."

"Huh," the tall, thin officer said.

My parents and Grandma were appalled and frightened. A ghost? They looked at each other, but they wouldn't meet my eyes. Now she's seeing ghosts. We're back where we started.

I knew that my mom would be making appointments for me with Dr. West as soon as I got home. I could have told them about Lottie's diary. They could have gone to her with their questions. But it didn't seem fair to drag out the secret she'd protected for all these years. And for what? They'd only think the diary had encouraged me to imagine such an impossible story.

I felt calm and almost at peace. It might have been partly the pain medications I was given day and night. But there was definitely a change in me. I'd been this close to death, but I was alive with a lot of time to think.

Noah! In the end, he'd given his life for mine, whatever life or half-life he possessed. He'd thought in that instant that I was someone called Lydia, someone he must have loved with all his heart. His need to save her, and his lasting love for her had been stronger than his evil.

But she was dead. And saving me would not have brought her back any more than saving Donna would have brought Kirsty back to me. If I'd died, would that have made Kirsty forgive me? Did I think she wanted vengeance?

I stared at her smiling face in my locket, and I seemed to hear her say, "Och, my foolish wee banty hen. Don't you know I forgave you a long time ago? It's you that needs to be forgiving your own silly self." She had been telling me that all these months. All I had to do was open my heart and listen. I knew her and the strength of our friendship. Why hadn't I known that?

We were back home before the four bodies were discovered, buried in the basement. They were identified as Alice Hart, Eliza May Little, Florence Peterson, all of them reported missing years before. And Donna Cuesta. I think I'd known she was dead the minute I saw her picture on the wall. Before that, I'd hoped and hoped that somehow I could find her. Now, reading her name in newsprint, I cried. I could see her looking out at me from the flyer.
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? CALL
I-800
-THE-LOST.
I could see her mother's sad, lined face.

Four lost girls. And how many more of the lost whose bodies were not in that basement? Belinda Cunningham, for one. And then there were the almost-lost, like Lottie Lovelace and me, Catherine Jeffers, saved in time.

It was accepted that the man who had been incinerated had killed all those girls. The burned-out room where he must have lived for many years had been searched and searched again. Nothing was left.

Who was the man? Who had lived in that blackened shell of a body? No one knew.

I knew.

The investigations dragged on, and although I was in faraway Chicago, I didn't escape them.

The Chicago police came to question me. Two detectives flew in from Pasadena. They were all kind and patient, but when I kept repeating the same story, they treated me the way you'd treat someone whose mind wasn't quite what it should be. I had nothing more to tell them.

As they were leaving, the second time they came, one of the Pasadena officers tipped something from a small envelope into his hand and held it out to me. "This was in the ashes," he said.

It was a ring. He let it slide around in his hand, the gold twisted serpent shining, its red ruby eyes sparkling under the lamplight. "Have you seen it before?"

"No," I whispered. "I think it belonged to Donna Cuesta. I was told she wore a ring like this."

I turned my head away from the officers. Lottie had worn it, too. I knew it was the ring Noah gave to his vie-tims. Was it meant, this time, for me?

The detective let it slip back into the envelope. "Strange how the most unexpected things survive a fire," he said, and I nodded agreement. "Strange."

On a cold February afternoon, I called Miss Lottie Lovelace.

Her nurse answered, and I could tell by her small silence when I gave my name that she remembered me and that she knew some of the things that had happened.

"Just a minute, please," she said. "I'll see if Miss Lovelace wants to come to the phone."

I stared out the window at the naked elm trees, snow skimming their branches.

"Hello." Miss Lovelace's nervous old voice.

"Hello. I wanted to make sure you got the diary that I mailed back."

"Yes." I could hardly hear her.

"Good," I said. "I also wanted to thank you for letting me read it. For warning me." Tremulous and nervous myself now. "You saved me. You atoned for the baby—and Belinda." Would she understand what I was saying?

She began to cough, and I waited till the spasm passed, clutching the phone, listening to the thud of my heart. "He's dead, you know," I said. "He's the one they found burned to death in the basement."

"He was always dead," she said.

"But he's gone now. Gone forever," I told her.

"Are you sure?" Her voice was stronger now, clearer.

"Yes. He's gone forever."

"I am not so certain," she said and hung up the phone.

My hands were suddenly wet with sweat.

Grandma wrote that St. Matthew's was open for business again. The church itself had had little damage. Everyone sent love. All of her letters and e-mails were deliberately upbeat and cheerful, but underneath I sensed something more: a hesitation, an uncertainty, as if maybe she did believe my story. My grandma, who had lived long enough to know there are more mysteries in heaven and earth than any of us can even dream of. And that we all need to be delivered from ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night.

She was worried about my health, mental and physical. I kept reassuring her that Dr. West said I was making excellent progress. And that I knew I was. Though I had to work hard to keep the thought of those poor, dead girls from taking over my mind. The Lost, living in terror and dying in terror in that dark underworld where Noah reigned.

Sometimes she mentioned Collin.

"I saw him in the library," she wrote. "He sends his love, too."

Actually, he sent his love a lot, in e-mails and funny cards. Each one ended with the words, "Love, Collin." I knew that meant nothing. That's how everyone ends their letters, even to people they don't love at all. My dad joked that he once got an audit notification from the income tax people signed "Love from your friends at the IRS."

Collin's notes were short and stilted, but I looked forward to them more than anything.

I was back in school. "Everyone's being nice," I wrote to Collin. "If they think I'm a freak, they're hiding it. They're curious, of course. They quizzed me a lot, especially at the beginning, but they could see I didn't want to talk about it, and after a time they quit. They know I was in a fire and got hurt, and there was this creepy guy who tried to kidnap me and who'd killed other girls. That's all they know.

"At first, I was kind of a sensation. I think they're waiting till they sense I'm all better, and then they'll pounce. One of the girls told me the school principal talked to them before I came back, and warned them to be sensitive and not to interrogate me. I don't plan on telling more than they know already. Enough's enough.

"My parents are great. They're keeping me super busy, which I think is a part of their Big Plan. We hike in Lincoln Park. We've been to
The Lion King,
and next week we have tickets for a Bob Dylan concert. They're crazier about him than I am, but it will be fun. They don't ask questions."

Collin had asked very few questions himself. But I knew he would, sooner or later. Would I tell him everything? Would he believe me? That might be some kind of a test, and it made me nervous.

Sometimes in the night I'd wake up and think about Noah. I'd see him standing by my bed, the long sleeves of his white shirt rolled above his wrists. His curling dark hair. That brilliant smile. The grace of him, the charm.

And I'd sit up in bed and stifle my scream or shiver and shake and bury my head under the covers. Then I'd make myself visualize the photograph of him that Lottie had taken. Nothing but a blank. That's how I needed him to be. But on those nights, I knew I had a long way to go.

"He's gone now. Gone forever," I'd told Miss Lovelace.

"Are you sure?" she'd asked.

Of course I was sure.

And then it was spring vacation. Daffodils danced happily in our garden, and crocuses, purple and yellow, turned their faces to the first sun. My singed hair had grown back in. I was in my parents' bedroom, working on their computer, when I heard the doorbell ring.

It was Collin.

"My dad had a meeting in Chicago," he said. "I told him I'd carry his bags." He was wearing the same dark pants and leather school jacket he'd worn the night we went to
The Nutcracker.
His blond hair still stuck up a little in back. "What a hunk!" Grandma had said. Grandma had an unerring eye for hunks.

My heart beat faster than fast. "I'm really glad to see you," I said. Jeepers! I hadn't meant to sound that glad!

He held out a flower—except it wasn't a flower, it was a dandelion, the fluffy kind that you blow on to make a wish. "This is for you. You can't imagine how hard it was to bring on the plane."

"I can guess." I felt as shy as he looked. He'd remembered Grandma's story, and I remembered, too.

"Are you going to blow on it now?" I sounded so dorky I was making myself sick.

"Should I?"

"Sure. I don't mind cleaning up the seeds."

"I'll help. But let's both hold it."

Our fingers touched on the smooth, milky stem. I closed my eyes, whispering in my mind the old-fashioned words that my grandfather had said to my grandmother all those years ago. "I wish that you would be my sweetheart forever and ever."

We both blew.

The gossamer seeds sailed like small parachutes around us, and the dandelion head was left bare on its stalk.

I thought that was a really good sign.

Eve Bunting is the celebrated author of a wide range of books for young readers. Her novels for Clarion include
Spying on Miss Müller, Face at the Edge of the World,
and
Someone Is Hiding on Alcatraz Island.
She lives in Pasadena, California, with her husband, Ed.